My normal drive is a manual 320d, but last week i had a 328i auto loaner.

In the 328i, for a given speed (say 40mph), if i selected eco-pro mode the rev counter needle dropped, whereas in sport mode it went up, compared to comfort mode. This suggested to me that there must have been gear changes to either lower or higher gears.

However, in my 320d manual there is no gear change (obviously) irrespective of drive mode. So how or what affects the performance if the revs don't change?

Do auto drivers therefore get an extra bonus of rev change as well as whatever else is affected by the drive mode selection?

My normal drive is a manual 320d, but last week i had a 328i auto loaner.

In the 328i, for a given speed (say 40mph), if i selected eco-pro mode the rev counter needle dropped, whereas in sport mode it went up, compared to comfort mode. This suggested to me that there must have been gear changes to either lower or higher gears.

However, in my 320d manual there is no gear change (obviously) irrespective of drive mode. So how or what affects the performance if the revs don't change?

Do auto drivers therefore get an extra bonus of rev change as well as whatever else is affected by the drive mode selection?

In a manual, you as driver have total control of the gear selection, but doesn't the display give you an indication on when to change up or down, appropriate to the mode you are in?

HighlandPete

In the manual, the display does have the indication of the optimum gear to be in based upon the mode you're driving in at the time. I tend to find for most day to day driving it is fairly intuitive anyway which gear to be in but sometimes, especially in Eco Pro, it does seem a bit alien.

As far as I can remember Sport doesn't give the indicator but this may have been more because I was choosing to ignore what it was trying to tell me and have a bit of fun. Maybe it got fed up trying to tell me to change rather than push the power that bit further

With the manual 328, the throttle has some artificial lag in comfort and eco pro. If you press down the throttle quickly, and hold it there, it gradually increases the power. In sport mode it feels *almost* instantaneous, but I think there is some slight lag, because somehow it feels even more responsive if you turn off DSC. I imagine there's something similar on the 320, but it would be less noticible with less power.

Although there is a 'what gear to be in indicator', i think this is a bit misleading. For instance, say at 40 mph in comfort mode, the gear indicator might still be saying 4th gear, but press the eco-pro switch and it will indicate that i can change to 4th gear say at 38mph. (I know this doesn't sound much but it's just by way of example). The car will still pull but i think this is because of all the torque which the engine has. So in reality as far as i can tell, nothing in the engine's performance has changed, unlike in the auto where there is a gear change. Similarly i can drive at say 25mph (albeit not with a lot of umph) in 4th gear and with eco-pro, but i can still do the same in 4th gear with comfort mode. So i can't really figure out if there's any performance change, or not.